I'm not sure when this started - other than some time ago - but now when I add a new image to a blog post, an extra copy (sometimes 3 copies) is placed in my media library. Commonly, they will have the suffix "_m".

Worse, if I re-use one of these images, another copy is created and that *copy* is used in the blog post. I currently have 50+ versions of a logo I use. If I delete a copy, I have to edit the document manually to point it towards the original.

I mentioned this on the WordPress support forum, and someone suggested switching to Twenty Eleven and see what happened. Problem solved. Although my blog looks a bit poo as a result! Back to Atahualpa and the problem returns.

I'm on WP3.4 and Atahualpa 3.7.7, although the problem's been round for a couple of months now so has stretched back to Atahualpa 3.6.4 and WP 3.2, I reckon.

Themes have nothing to do with the media portion of wordpress, it is part of the base code.

You know, I'd have thought the exact same thing... until I switched to a default theme, went through the exact same steps with the exact same images as I do with Atahualpa, and didn't get the problem.

Switched back to Atahualpa, tried again... and the problem re-occurred.

Honestly, I'm baffled.

Have you tried shutting all plugins off?
Also how large are the images you upload? 100k? Or 1meg or so? Wordpress makes resized copies of large images.

Thanks for getting back to me. No, I've not tried the plug-in thing as it was getting rather later last night. I'll try that later this evening.

The images are pretty dinky, and the one in particular I have umpteen copies of is nowhere near 1Mb. It's definitely not the WP auto-thumbnail thing as that's making single copies of other images and adding a "_m" extension. These ones are being given numbers at the end.

Just strange how changing theme stops it happening, unless it's a plug-in that simply doesn't function with the twenty eleven theme.

I've just played with my site and when I upload a image, i do get multiple copies, but they are the standard resized ones WordPress does.

I'd be happy to take a look, but if it turned out not to be a theme issue, I'd have to charge you for my time. If you are interested send me a PM with an admin ID/PW

For someone who blogs frequently with lots of images, all of which have multiple copies created by WP, there is a nifty plugin called Add from Server.

You create a folder in your root folder or wherever, and tell the plugin where it is. Optimized photos can be FTP'ed to that folder. When you go to insert a photo, one of the options is now Add from Server.

Click the picture you want, it gets added ALONE to the media Library, where you can then select and insert it.